(Big ups to Team Thirsty, Team Get Dat Paper and Team Having-a-Second-Reconstructive-Knee-Surgery-in-Less-Than-Two-Years. PicProps: Esther Lin, obvi.)
OK, so here’s a textbook example of why fighters need managers (preferably managers who are not also their girlfriends, because that’s a no-win situation for everyone): Word out of Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal’s camp in the wake of his loss to Rafael “Feijao” Cavalcante at Strikeforce: Houston on Saturday is that Mo blew out both the anterior and posterior cruciate ligaments in his left knee during the bout. Because he’s an MMA fighter, Lawal wanted to squeeze in one more fight before opting to have surgery, but fortunately cooler (read: sane) heads prevailed. Manager Ryan Parsons now says the former Strikeforce light heavyweight champion could be out for up to nine months.
“Mo wanted to take one more fight, but we decided that this injury should be attended to first,” Parsons told Sherdog.com yesterday. Um, yeah. No shit.
For those of you scoring at home the ACL and PCL are two of the four major ligaments responsible for holding a guy’s knee together. The ACL seems to be the most poorly designed (Ed. Note: Way to go, God.) as its destruction is the most common serious knee injury in sports. It’s also the ligament most likely to be referred to by infuriating ESPN “personalities” simply as the “Cru.” For example, “Homie blew out his Cru,” or “He’s out for the year rehabbing a Cru.” If that doesn’t make you want to die, I don’t know what will.
Anyway, the relevant point here being that it would be pretty crazy for Lawal to go out and try to compete in an MMA fight without the use of those two ligaments, though certainly dudes have done it before. For his part, the fighter says he doesn’t know when during the fight the injury occurred, but is somehow pretty sure it didn’t happen while he was shooting for a takedown on Feijao.
Sherdog reports this will be Lawal’s second ACL surgery since beginning his MMA fighting career. The first came after he injured his knee in the opening round of a fight against Ryo Kawamura at Sengoku “Seventh Battle” in March 2009. Lawal went on to win that fight by decision.
This weekend, Feijao stopped him after a series of strikes in the third round, claiming the Strikeforce 205-pound strap and dealing the former Oklahoma State wrestler his first career loss. As a side note, King Mo’s defeat led to fairly entertaining Twitter exchange between Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Lawal teammate Daniel Cormier, which you can read here and here.
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That’s nipple BLING, son.